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Is it really cheaper to shoot in digital ?


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If film processing was instantaneous, film cameras had 4k video taps you could focus pull from just like a digital camera and 1000iso stock existed, I think people would have no reason to shoot digitally. The added "cost" to shoot film wouldn't even be considered if the film comes out of the camera and within two hours or so, is already turned into digital files and ready for editing. 

 

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1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:

If film processing was instantaneous, film cameras had 4k video taps you could focus pull from just like a digital camera and 1000iso stock existed, I think people would have no reason to shoot digitally. The added "cost" to shoot film wouldn't even be considered if the film comes out of the camera and within two hours or so, is already turned into digital files and ready for editing. 

 

So... digital? 

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2 hours ago, Dylan Gill said:

So... digital? 

My point exactly .. sort of stating the case for Digital in a nut shell..  if a horse could fly.. then we wouldn't have planes.. but... they cant .. so we have planes .. you can still tavel by horse .. but its inconvenient 

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2 hours ago, Dylan Gill said:

So... digital? 

You can do all those things with film. Yes, nobody has bothered to make a 4k tap, but it's totally doable. There is a portable lab that can go on set and literally process the rolls as they exit the camera and it can go right on the transfer machine for immediate post processing. Those things cost money of course, but literally peanuts on a big show. There are literally so many productions being shot on film at once, it's impossible for there to be enough portable labs anyway. Most people just send to the lab at the end of the day, just like on digital shows. So there really isn't anything different outside of having physical media instead of fictitious media that can be erased by literally anyone on the planet, without it being an accident. At least with Film I know for fact, my media will be safe forever, without paying hundreds of thousands of dollars preserving camera originals for 100 years. 

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43 minutes ago, Robin R Probyn said:

My point exactly .. sort of stating the case for Digital in a nut shell..  if a horse could fly.. then we wouldn't have planes.. but... they cant .. so we have planes .. you can still tavel by horse .. but its inconvenient 

The analogy is newspapers vs web news. 

With web news, ya never know what you're gonna get. You've gotta filter out all the shit to find one piece of gold. 

With newspapers, ya don't need to filter at all really, it's a very analog source of media that is easy to consume and right to the point. 

When we're all dead, what will survive are physical items, not digital ones.

You can tell digital stories all you want, but in 100 years, they will not even be a distant memory, they will be literally not exist anymore. I want someone 100 years from now to find some boxes in a garage somewhere and hold my negatives up to light and get curious about what they are. That's a lot to ask, but if you don't try, then you'll never know. 

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10 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

The analogy is newspapers vs web news. 

With web news, ya never know what you're gonna get. You've gotta filter out all the poop to find one piece of gold. 

With newspapers, ya don't need to filter at all really, it's a very analog source of media that is easy to consume and right to the point. 

When we're all dead, what will survive are physical items, not digital ones.

You can tell digital stories all you want, but in 100 years, they will not even be a distant memory, they will be literally not exist anymore. I want someone 100 years from now to find some boxes in a garage somewhere and hold my negatives up to light and get curious about what they are. That's a lot to ask, but if you don't try, then you'll never know. 

Couldn't you always make a film out for archiving? I like both film and digital, so I don't have a horse in the race

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1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:

The analogy is newspapers vs web news. 

With web news, ya never know what you're gonna get. You've gotta filter out all the poop to find one piece of gold. 

With newspapers, ya don't need to filter at all really, it's a very analog source of media that is easy to consume and right to the point. 

When we're all dead, what will survive are physical items, not digital ones.

You can tell digital stories all you want, but in 100 years, they will not even be a distant memory, they will be literally not exist anymore. I want someone 100 years from now to find some boxes in a garage somewhere and hold my negatives up to light and get curious about what they are. That's a lot to ask, but if you don't try, then you'll never know. 

Sorry don't see the analogy there at all..   are you saying there is nothing crap shot on film.. ?.. newspapers last longer than digital .. not sure thats always true.. ? a box of your old photos will be precious in the future ?.. your last sentence .. dont get that all sir .. we are talking about film V Digital ..which is cheaper for production companies .. no..?

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@Phil I don't know if it's much cheaper in the UK or something but I swear to God, 2 perf camera package at Panavision: $3,800 for a one week rental including lenses of course, etc, etc. I haven't really seen any rental site in the US offering an Alexa at £300 a day. A 400 feet 35mm film fresh from Kodak works out to $220 with the discount. 

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56 minutes ago, Manu Delpech said:

@Phil I don't know if it's much cheaper in the UK or something but I swear to God, 2 perf camera package at Panavision: $3,800 for a one week rental including lenses of course, etc, etc. I haven't really seen any rental site in the US offering an Alexa at £300 a day. A 400 feet 35mm film fresh from Kodak works out to $220 with the discount. 

But that 400ft is 5 mins or a bit less in the camera .. @ $220... does that include lab.. and transport costs ..  the ,latest SxS 120GB Pro X card is about $1,000..just over ¥100,000.. and give you approx 1 hour in 4K 17-9 23.98p.. and then you can use it literally 1,000,s of times.. and down load in 10 mins with the new reader..to 4TB drives that cost $200...  see what Im getting at.. 

The telling thing in your post is actually how cheap the film camera,s are to rent now.. because no one is using them.. 

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1 hour ago, Manu Delpech said:

@Phil I don't know if it's much cheaper in the UK or something but I swear to God, 2 perf camera package at Panavision: $3,800 for a one week rental including lenses of course, etc, etc. I haven't really seen any rental site in the US offering an Alexa at £300 a day. A 400 feet 35mm film fresh from Kodak works out to $220 with the discount. 

It looks like the Alexa classics have come down in price a lot, VMI are pretty keenly priced:

https://vmi.tv/equipment/125/arri/987/arri-alexa-hire-london-plus

Kind of in the ball park of a Panavision 35mm hire.

Alexa Minis are still expensive  and the demand for the latest tech as brought the cost of the older cams down a bit. 

So even if digital is more expensive to hire, its not much more expensive if you stay away from the latest and greatest.

If you get a an amazing deal on the stock and lab work and stick to a very tight shooting ratio maybe the balance shifts. But great deals aren't always possible and quite location dependant, e,g if your far away from a Lab it gets harder. Although possible, shooting more cheaply I would still state is the exception, not the rule

 

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10 hours ago, Dylan Gill said:

Couldn't you always make a film out for archiving? I like both film and digital, so I don't have a horse in the race

You could, but prints don't last as long as original camera negative, not even close. 

It's not about "liking" a particular format. The discussion was about cost. 

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9 hours ago, Robin R Probyn said:

Sorry don't see the analogy there at all..   are you saying there is nothing crap shot on film.. ?.. newspapers last longer than digital .. not sure thats always true.. ? a box of your old photos will be precious in the future ?.. your last sentence .. dont get that all sir .. we are talking about film V Digital ..which is cheaper for production companies .. no..?

Yea, your old box of photos will be the future, that's correct. There have been countless studies that show that current media will simply not exist in the future. As people die off, their web accounts get turned off, their computers get lost and stop working, their content is not "backed up" anymore and all of a sudden, their entire life slowly disappears. Within 50 years, the media footprint of a modern digital citizen, will simply not exist. Heck, I know people who've died recently and not only is their media footprint online gone, but their computers were dumped to me as "recyclable", nobody wanted to save anything. In fact, they wanted everything destroyed for intellectual properly reasons. I asked about personal documents and pictures, but the family was uninterested. 

So do I really want a lifetime of content producing to be lost after I'm gone? No... I don't. If it were a bunch of industrial/commercial shit, who cares. You're talking feature film's and long form content. 

If you count in the life of the product (20 - 50 years), film is cheaper, period. 

If you're only counting "production" then ya, it's arguable that film can be more tricky to deal with, henceforth there could be a greater cost associated. However, the budgets on big hollywood shows WENT UP when digital cinema started. 

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10 hours ago, Manu Delpech said:

@Phil I don't know if it's much cheaper in the UK or something but I swear to God, 2 perf camera package at Panavision: $3,800 for a one week rental including lenses of course, etc, etc. I haven't really seen any rental site in the US offering an Alexa at £300 a day. A 400 feet 35mm film fresh from Kodak works out to $220 with the discount. 

 

9 hours ago, Robin R Probyn said:

But that 400ft is 5 mins or a bit less in the camera .. @ $220... does that include lab.. and transport costs ..  the ,latest SxS 120GB Pro X card is about $1,000..just over ¥100,000.. and give you approx 1 hour in 4K 17-9 23.98p.. and then you can use it literally 1,000,s of times.. and down load in 10 mins with the new reader..to 4TB drives that cost $200...  see what Im getting at.. 

The telling thing in your post is actually how cheap the film camera,s are to rent now.. because no one is using them.. 

 

5 hours ago, Phil Connolly said:

It looks like the Alexa classics have come down in price a lot, VMI are pretty keenly priced:

https://vmi.tv/equipment/125/arri/987/arri-alexa-hire-london-plus

Kind of in the ball park of a Panavision 35mm hire.

Alexa Minis are still expensive  and the demand for the latest tech as brought the cost of the older cams down a bit. 

So even if digital is more expensive to hire, its not much more expensive if you stay away from the latest and greatest.

If you get a an amazing deal on the stock and lab work and stick to a very tight shooting ratio maybe the balance shifts. But great deals aren't always possible and quite location dependant, e,g if your far away from a Lab it gets harder. Although possible, shooting more cheaply I would still state is the exception, not the rule

 

The last project I shot we rented an Alexa Mini for $300 for the weekend. Not sure how this worked out, part of the reason I hired a producer to not worry about it. After I paid the insurance I was forwarded a rental list. Even though several people involved owned Red's I wanted to shoot Alexa, so 300 for the weekend was a no brainer. If you're on the small scale I'm sure there's places to rent an Alexa for a reasonable price, or you need to have a line producer with good connections. My hard drives costed more then the camera rental and we got the lenses (Zeiss Super Speeds) comped because they made a mistake. 

On a big show the rental budget won't make that big of a difference. However I had toyed around with the idea of shooting that project on 35mm (3 perf) and the film stock with a connection at Kodak came out to something like $5,000 for the amount I needed for my high shooting ratio. That was half the budget of the short, not worth it (even though the camera would have likely costed close to nothing) 

I've very pleased with the way it turned out, and we even we're able to do a 4K DI. It was cheaper than film for sure. 

48 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Yea, your old box of photos will be the future, that's correct. There have been countless studies that show that current media will simply not exist in the future. As people die off, their web accounts get turned off, their computers get lost and stop working, their content is not "backed up" anymore and all of a sudden, their entire life slowly disappears. Within 50 years, the media footprint of a modern digital citizen, will simply not exist. Heck, I know people who've died recently and not only is their media footprint online gone, but their computers were dumped to me as "recyclable", nobody wanted to save anything. In fact, they wanted everything destroyed for intellectual properly reasons. I asked about personal documents and pictures, but the family was uninterested. 

So do I really want a lifetime of content producing to be lost after I'm gone? No... I don't. If it were a bunch of industrial/commercial poop, who cares. You're talking feature film's and long form content. 

If you count in the life of the product (20 - 50 years), film is cheaper, period. 

If you're only counting "production" then ya, it's arguable that film can be more tricky to deal with, henceforth there could be a greater cost associated. However, the budgets on big hollywood shows WENT UP when digital cinema started. 

I hope my work will be good enough someday to be worth taking care of it's archival but that's pretty unlikely.

I worked in a recording studio most of my 20's and was a tape operator. People came to record to tape, then after the guys in their 60's got their kicks, most people came in and wanted to lay it down on Pro Tools. Tape has all the same archival advantages as film does, but to me it's a bigger gap in quality then cinema, tape sounds like thunder where digi just kind of falls flat. Probably due to lousy musicians using every crutch they have. 

I got tired of fighting the analog battle and losing. When I noticed digital footage started getting really good, I tried to tell myself not to get to luddite about it if I make it. 

Unless I get a 100m dollar budget someday I'll probably shoot Alexa and then do a film out if the movie turns out to be worth a damn. 

I'm not concerned about my foot print after I'm dead though, I realize that's uncommon though

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9 hours ago, Robin R Probyn said:

But that 400ft is 5 mins or a bit less in the camera ..

2 perf is around 9 minutes on 400ft. Most people shoot 1000ft magazines which is around 22 min. 

9 hours ago, Robin R Probyn said:

@ $220... does that include lab.. and transport costs ..  the ,latest SxS 120GB Pro X card is about $1,000..just over ¥100,000.. and give you approx 1 hour in 4K 17-9 23.98p..

If you're talking feature films, you're also talking about Arri Alexa, not SONY. So if you're shooting Arri Raw with an Arri Alexa, you're talking A LOT of media. 512gb card at 4k is around 18 minutes. Yes you can "reuse" the cards, but you can't "reuse" the hard drives that store the media. So you're looking at 1 hour and 10 minutes per 2tb drive and you need at last 2 of those. Sure, 2TB drives aren't expensive, but when you're shooting as much as a "digital" show shoots, you're gobbling up that drive space quite a bit. That PLUS the necessity of a DIT on set (a role that doesn't exist on film shoots), does add up pretty fast. So where film is more expensive for sure, it's not to the point that most people assume it is. 

9 hours ago, Robin R Probyn said:

The telling thing in your post is actually how cheap the film camera,s are to rent now.. because no one is using them.. 

They're cheap to rent, but bro Panavision has literally 50 modern cameras and over 200 non-modern cameras. It's hard for them to "run out" of cameras in 2019. Believe it or not, most of the big shows are Panavision, partially because they have very nice HD taps, but also because of anamorphic lens/accessory selection. It fits the way people generally work on a feature film. In terms of Arri cameras, most of the big houses have gone out out of business OR stopped renting 35mm cameras. However, there are plenty of places to get film cameras in 2019. There are far more cameras than shoots, especially in distant regions. 

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31 minutes ago, Dylan Gill said:

The last project I shot we rented an Alexa Mini for $300 for the weekend.

You can share grid an Alexa Mini for $300 bux, but nobody on a big show needs one camera. 

You can also share grid/work deals on film stock and film post. It's not difficult, it just means you need to know someone whose "in the know" and of course, be willing to wait for the low-cost work to be finished. If I had to work with film at retail pricing, I would never work with film period. It's all about who you know and there are deals everywhere, they're just not flat in front of your face like ordering a low-cost rig on share grid. 

31 minutes ago, Dylan Gill said:

On a big show the rental budget won't make that big of a difference. However I had toyed around with the idea of shooting that project on 35mm (3 perf) and the film stock with a connection at Kodak came out to something like $5,000 for the amount I needed for my high shooting ratio. That was half the budget of the short, not worth it (even though the camera would have likely costed close to nothing) 

On a small show, you don't need a DIT, you don't need a bunch of hard drives for storage either. The smaller the show, more shooting digital makes sense, because the convenience benefits of shooting digital outweigh the look difference between the two formats. At the same time, I'm currently shooting a feature on 16mm and that filmmaker is hustling every angle he can get for deals. He guesstimates the 85 page script will cost around $7k to shoot on film, thanks to the deals he got. That includes labor (he's paying everyone), camera and stock. We're shooting at a super low ratio, with long takes, but those are the consequences of such a low budget. You make due with what you have in order to get "that look" and I don't care how good you are as a digital artist, you aren't fooling anyone when you shoot a 50:1 ratio digitally and add some film grain. It does not look the same, even on youtube. 

31 minutes ago, Dylan Gill said:

Tape has all the same archival advantages as film does, but to me it's a bigger gap in quality then cinema, tape sounds like thunder where digi just kind of falls flat. Probably due to lousy musicians using every crutch they have. 

I mean 30IPS 2" 16 track is pretty amazing. I've never heard anything digitally recorded that comes close. There is a certain depth to the audio that just doesn't come through on the digital recording. Even if you used the same preamp's, the same mixing console, same output stage and recorded one side to Pro Tools and one side to 1/4" 30ips half track for mastering, the two will not sound the same. 

31 minutes ago, Dylan Gill said:

I got tired of fighting the analog battle and losing. When I noticed digital footage started getting really good, I tried to tell myself not to get to luddite about it if I make it. 

Digital does look great! It really does. 

But it's not film, not at all. 

I shoot and grade my own stuff on a daily basis, both digitally and on film. I'm so dismayed how difficult it is to grade digital shows, it's like some sort of a joke really. I always have to power window, I always have to do facial work with Resolve's face smoothing tools, I always have to noise reduce and even then, I'm never truly satisfied with everything. It doesn't matter if I shoot it or someone else shoots it, with digital it's always the same issues. I've worked with top ASC Cinematographers who are phenomenal guys, they will WAY out skill me as a DP,  yet I still have to manipulate the image to the point of insanity. 

With the film shows I've worked on, I do much of the cleanup work during the scan. Insuring the highlights don't clip, getting the color balance perfect (basically like a LUT in a digital workflow) and making sure there is enough information to grade. Then in DaVinci, most of the time I create a base layer for every scene and it matched perfectly. I never have to do face work, I have yet to do ANY power window work on ANY film show and only on the rare occasion do I noise reduce. I work with Pro Res 4444 files which are what the scanner produces and it's seamless on my system, vs having to transcode or work with RAW digital files, which is a pain in the ass speed wise. 

In the end, for post alone, film is a far easier way to work. It delivers a more consistent image because there are no settings in the camera to muck with the color science. You get what ya got and that consistency is amazing to me, it just doesn't exist in the digital world unless you shoot digital like film and NEVER make any adjustments to the camera body itself, which is... well challenging to do! If ya got the buttons to make those changes, you're probably going to make the changes. 

31 minutes ago, Dylan Gill said:

I'm not concerned about my foot print after I'm dead though, I realize that's uncommon though

Eh, most people don't care about footprint. 

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33 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

You make due with what you have in order to get "that look" and I don't care how good you are as a digital artist, you aren't fooling anyone when you shoot a 50:1 ratio digitally and add some film grain. It does not look the same, even on youtube. 

Agreed 100%, though I prefer 35mm over 16 and 65mm look. But you're right, you aren't fooling anyone. I went through two colorists, and both used film emulator lut's which I thought was pointless, since, like you said, we aren't fooling anyone. The first guy sucked and had to fire him, the second guy was so good and finished it on a tight schedule that I didn't mind the LUT, however I told both no phony film grain. 

35 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

You can share grid an Alexa Mini for $300 bux, but nobody on a big show needs one camera. 

I know, though this was through a rental house or a private owner-- still a good deal, better then other guys in this thread are getting for Alexa Mini's. I'm a big single camera snob, but you would have to have a B body ready to go on a big show for sure. 

This was a very small show, but we kind of rolled out surprisingly big guns at times (crane, underwater housing, etc). Lot of people commented that it was the most professional set they had been on which was mind blowing for me to hear, since it was a personal project. 

38 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I always have to power window, I always have to do facial work with Resolve's face smoothing tools

We had to do A LOT of this. My favorite thing about film is the way it renders skin. Arguably the most important part of a cinematic image. At my station I just can't justify film yet. 

 

39 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I mean 30IPS 2" 16 track is pretty amazing. I've never heard anything digitally recorded that comes close. There is a certain depth to the audio that just doesn't come through on the digital recording. Even if you used the same preamp's, the same mixing console, same output stage and recorded one side to Pro Tools and one side to 1/4" 30ips half track for mastering, the two will not sound the same. 

Amazing taste Tyler. I have yet to hear digital match tape, only albums that come close were late 70's early 80's records that were recorded on digital tape and high budgets. I'm thinking Billy Joel's "Nylon Curtain" and Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms". At my studio we worked with a 24 track at 15 ips IEC, which is a european curve that has the bass density of NAB 15 ips with a clearer top end of 30. That said I've always preferred 30 ips. I think a lot to do with it is the lack of budget though. Albums make no money so they can't put a lot in, so you get a lot of software instruments, beat correction and auto tune. I have recorded with good musicians on digi with none of that and it still lacks punch. It was the wrong field for me though, I'm a much better filmmaker. 

 

Just PS, you're much more experienced than me so I hope nothing I wrote came off as "I know everything" because i don't, not even close haha. You also helped me months ago with the upscale question I had about finishing the short. Turned out none of the guys could do it, so I had the DCP house do the upscale and print me out a prores 4444 archival version at 3996x2160.  

Screen Shot 2019-10-11 at 1.29.11 PM.jpg

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55 minutes ago, Dylan Gill said:

We had to do A LOT of this. My favorite thing about film is the way it renders skin. Arguably the most important part of a cinematic image. At my station I just can't justify film yet. 

And that's the biggest cost savings with film; post production. Not only properly scanning the image to get the best dynamic range, but also coloring and finishing the image. It's a much easier, less time consuming process than digital. I shoot a lot of random stuff on film these days and I'm always taken back by how good the images look right out of the scanner. Small adjustments can equate to a final image very fast. 

55 minutes ago, Dylan Gill said:

I'm thinking Billy Joel's "Nylon Curtain" and Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms".

Brothers in Arms is one of my favorite albums (I have the LP haha) and I've always been dismayed with the sound quality. I believe it was recorded on a Sony 24 track DASH digital recorder. I don't blame the recorder as much as the preamp's and final mix. I just needs a remix to 1/2 track analog ?

55 minutes ago, Dylan Gill said:

Just PS, you're much more experienced than me so I hope nothing I wrote came off as "I know everything" because i don't, not even close haha. You also helped me months ago with the upscale question I had about finishing the short. Turned out none of the guys could do it, so I had the DCP house do the upscale and print me out a prores 4444 archival version at 3996x2160.  

Ohh nice! 

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Well, there is also lighting to consider.  On my last project we used an Alexa Mini.  I like to work with a low light level, especially in certain locations where I'm using a bit of the practical lighting.

If I were to have shot on film, my lighting units would need to have been at least 2 times more powerful and that would have severely effected both the style of the film and the time it took to shoot it. And with an 18 day schedule, that's tight indeed.

And so the result doesn't look like film :), but it looks very good and was about the best we could do within our budget.  The price of camera rental and film stock, even if it equaled the price of the digital capture, would still be beyond our resources.

Lastly, as a colorist who has worked with both film and digital capture, I've never noticed that I need fewer power windows with a digital capture.  In general, I will use as many power windows and secondary adjustments as the time allows.  My biggest challenge in the past with color correcting digital movies are strong IRND filters that all have different color casts.  Cameras such as the Alexa Mini, with their built in ND filters have eliminated this issue for the most part, and the shots usually line up quite nicely.

And second lastly :), it's getting harder nowadays to find focus pullers who are good at focusing by distance, and not by eye!  And this sometimes drives me a little crazy, even when shooting with a digital camera...

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10 minutes ago, Bruce Greene said:

Well, there is also lighting to consider.  On my last project we used an Alexa Mini.  I like to work with a low light level, especially in certain locations where I'm using a bit of the practical lighting.

I mean, this is a very valid argument in the past, but with modern stocks, I don't see the argument anymore. I have used 500T in situations you can't even determine focus it's so dark and everything has come out great. Look at films like "The Favorite", which weren't allowed to use lights and the night scenes are all lit by candles and torches. I mean they pushed the stock in some cases, but it still looked outstanding. Little bit of digital grain removal (which you need to do in the digital world anyway) and you're good to go. 

I think the big issue is how the scanners deal with the black levels of the film stock. However, with HDR scanning these days, you can recover so much from the blacks it's changing the way people shoot film.   

Quote

Lastly, as a colorist who has worked with both film and digital capture, I've never noticed that I need fewer power windows with a digital capture.  In general, I will use as many power windows and secondary adjustments as the time allows.  My biggest challenge in the past with color correcting digital movies are strong IRND filters that all have different color casts.  Cameras such as the Alexa Mini, with their built in ND filters have eliminated this issue for the most part, and the shots usually line up quite nicely.

It's all about beauty passes. You don't really need to do them on film to the extent as digital. 

Quote

And second lastly :), it's getting harder nowadays to find focus pullers who are good at focusing by distance, and not by eye!  And this sometimes drives me a little crazy, even when shooting with a digital camera...

This is a huge problem. We just did a show where the focus puller didn't know how to measure by distance and most of is was out of focus, even though I warned them to measure every shot. 

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8 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

2 perf is around 9 minutes on 400ft. Most people shoot 1000ft magazines which is around 22 min. 

If you're talking feature films, you're also talking about Arri Alexa, not SONY. So if you're shooting Arri Raw with an Arri Alexa, you're talking A LOT of media. 512gb card at 4k is around 18 minutes. Yes you can "reuse" the cards, but you can't "reuse" the hard drives that store the media. So you're looking at 1 hour and 10 minutes per 2tb drive and you need at last 2 of those. Sure, 2TB drives aren't expensive, but when you're shooting as much as a "digital" show shoots, you're gobbling up that drive space quite a bit. That PLUS the necessity of a DIT on set (a role that doesn't exist on film shoots), does add up pretty fast. So where film is more expensive for sure, it's not to the point that most people assume it is. 

They're cheap to rent, but bro Panavision has literally 50 modern cameras and over 200 non-modern cameras. It's hard for them to "run out" of cameras in 2019. Believe it or not, most of the big shows are Panavision, partially because they have very nice HD taps, but also because of anamorphic lens/accessory selection. It fits the way people generally work on a feature film. In terms of Arri cameras, most of the big houses have gone out out of business OR stopped renting 35mm cameras. However, there are plenty of places to get film cameras in 2019. There are far more cameras than shoots, especially in distant regions. 

Ok but the quote was for 400ft..even 100ft for 22mins.. is going to be about $500..compared to any solid state media its massively more expensive ..let alone the fact SSM can be re used many hundreds of times.. Im not talking just feature films though .. where yes with a huge budget the film costs become less.. but alot are being forced to shoot digital for effects shots.. even the last Bourne movie they were..Barry Ackroyd didnt want to but was forced to.. if by no one else but the actual effects guys themselves who wanted it.. but for general production of any moving image.. even the expensive end of SxS cards.. is cheaper than film.. easy to backup.. re use etc.. its just an advance of technology.. that can now also pretty much match film aesthetically too.. so its going to take over .. trust me.. most shoots don't have a DIT either ..technical Darwinism  ? 

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22 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

t's all about beauty passes. You don't really need to do them on film to the extent as digital. 

I think this might have something to do with the digital capture, which is more "accurate" vs. film.  Film tends to move most flesh tones towards a middle flesh tone, while digital capture tends to show every color of the skin, often in it's "redish" glory.  It's not uncommon with digital capture to shoot a 2 shot, where one face looks normal and the second face looks more like a lobster, even though they are in the same lighting.  I certainly noticed this effect when shooting on the old RED 1 cameras...

So Tyler, I guess we actually agree ?

 

Edited by Bruce Greene
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Not to derail this thread, but isn't the film camera makers (bolex,arri,etc), film companies (kodak,fuji) and film developers and their inflated prices somewhat responsible for their own demise? 

The people who work in film know that the people who make film are wealthy so they charge ridiculously high costs and then rather then adjust their costs, they just say film is over. 

Film development labs like FotoKem are extremely expensive, and the actual costs to develop film are no where near what they charge, but it is what they charge because they know their clientele. 

This is true of film camera manufacturers as well. A 35mm film camera is a big metal box, with a motor and a piece of glass on it and they charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for it, and haven't lowered the costs in decades. 

Kodak and Fuji(RIP) did this too. Even now, you see kodak trying to turn 8mm into some hipster sheek aesthetic and market to that urban outfitters crowd. 

It used to be that the costs for film were much cheaper and easily accessible, a lot of homes had access to 16mm and part of that access helped the french new wave and independent film era of the 60's and 70's, then vhs came, and the film companies kept their prices high, and now are surprised that people have moved away from them. Aesthetically I like film more then digital, but as a business I'm kind of glad these film people are loosing business. They know longer have a monopoly and are seeing what happens when you introduce competition. 

And part of me thinks film wouldn't be in such dire trouble if the people who ran it weren't so old and stubborn and actually tried to innovate their products and adjust to the marketplace. 

/End of Rant

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7 hours ago, Jesse Hanna said:

Not to derail this thread, but isn't the film camera makers (bolex,arri,etc), film companies (kodak,fuji) and film developers and their inflated prices somewhat responsible for their own demise? 

The people who work in film know that the people who make film are wealthy so they charge ridiculously high costs and then rather then adjust their costs, they just say film is over. 

Film development labs like FotoKem are extremely expensive, and the actual costs to develop film are no where near what they charge, but it is what they charge because they know their clientele. 

This is true of film camera manufacturers as well. A 35mm film camera is a big metal box, with a motor and a piece of glass on it and they charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for it, and haven't lowered the costs in decades. 

Kodak and Fuji(RIP) did this too. Even now, you see kodak trying to turn 8mm into some hipster sheek aesthetic and market to that urban outfitters crowd. 

It used to be that the costs for film were much cheaper and easily accessible, a lot of homes had access to 16mm and part of that access helped the french new wave and independent film era of the 60's and 70's, then vhs came, and the film companies kept their prices high, and now are surprised that people have moved away from them. Aesthetically I like film more then digital, but as a business I'm kind of glad these film people are loosing business. They know longer have a monopoly and are seeing what happens when you introduce competition. 

And part of me thinks film wouldn't be in such dire trouble if the people who ran it weren't so old and stubborn and actually tried to innovate their products and adjust to the marketplace. 

/End of Rant

The irony is some of the early digital tech came from Kodak..  the whole Bayer sensor was from Kodak and their telecine curve.. Cineon is pretty much Arri LogC  with Sony joining the club a bit late with Slog3.. 

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